Can we decolonize time?

Time has been termed as the most democratic of resources; we all have the same number of twenty-four hours a day. But there is nothing equal about the way we get to spend our time. The 9-to-5 workday has been an imperceptible architecture that determines the life of the majority of the modern world. It controls sleeping, family, free time, efficiency, and even self-identity. However, this schedule was not produced spontaneously or less specifically. Rather it is an outcome of industrial capitalism, extraction of labour in colonies and centuries of conditioning human life to be centred on the needs of machines and not the needs of human life. It is in 2025, when dialogues about work-life balance, remote work, burnout, and brain and robot technology redefine workforce globally, that a rather provocative question is coming back into focus, namely whether or not we can decolonize time.

This paper investigates the historical roots of the industrial working day, questions the 9-to-5 as a form of colonial legacy, and discusses other alternative approaches, like co-operatives and decentralisation, which are reclaiming time, as a type of wealth, of control over their own time.

The Industrial Roots of the 9-to-5: Time as a Colonial Commodity

One of the facts that date back to the 19 th and early 20 th centuries is the modern workday, which required regular workforce to time up with the machine working. However, the history of time discipline goes even earlier, below, but not below, European colonial expansion. In his masterpiece Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism (1967), historian E. P. Thompson describes how pre-industrial societies worked with a natural rhythms and communal needs based time known as task-oriented time. But with the advent of factories there was more to do on time, repetitively, predictably that was not characteristic of most Indigenous and agrarian cultures.

The colonial powers exported these time policies to their colonies where they brought up labour on a clock basis, systems of wage payment and predetermined shifts. Work was no longer gauged by result, but by hours put in. It was not the mere financial thing it was a culture thing. It redefined the way societies perceived life, productivity and even moral values. On time became a symbol of civilization and flexible or seasonal work patterns were considered an indicator of laziness or primitiveness.

The 9 -to-5 is still to this day highly Eurocentric. It favours western standards of industry, urbanity, nuclear families and compulsion to productivity. And even though it was created to be used in the factory floor, it currently controls office employees, school educators, call centre workers, and even distressed industries that the factory work has long passed.

Time Poverty vs. Time Affluence in the 21st Century

With the acceleration of the digital capitalism, in addition to the financial inequality, workers receive not only the financial, but also the temporal inequality. The fact that one has minimal or no disposable time as a result of work overload, household duties or even rigid schedules are referred to as time poverty. A study across Harvard Business School reported that people that experience more time poverty claim to be less happy, health- and life-satisfied than their equivalent incomes but additional discretionary time (Harvard Business Review, 2023).

Conversely, time affluence is the sense of sufficient time to rest, relax, enjoy personal relationships and develop. The research also indicates that time affluence serves as an excellent predictor of well-being relative to income once the basic needs are satisfied (Kasser and Sheldon, 2009).

However, the majority of work places still define productivity based on the amount of time worked and not value created. This culture brings a paradox where the more efficient the technology, the more people are supposed to use the time saved doing more work. Automation has the opposite effect on time, making time poorer, rather than time free.

It is this contradiction that is the essence of the movement to decolonize time, both to question who possesses time, who is the beneficiary of this time and how the society recovers time as a type of wealth.

Case Study: Co-operatives and Decentralised Organisations Rewriting Work Structures

More organisations are questioning the workday in the industrial environment by putting excitement on autonomy, community control, and non-linear employment forms. Two instances demonstrate how this change is taking place in the actual workplaces.

Case Study 1: The Mondragon Corporation (Spain) – Redesigning Time Through Worker Ownership

The Mondragon Corporation is the biggest worker cooperative in the world with more than 80,000 employees working in manufacturing, finance, education, and retail. The workers of Mondragon have individual ownership over the business unlike in the traditional corporations and they are also involved in a democratic form of decision-making. This ownership structure has enabled them to test the water with flexible work time structures that were founded on community well-being instead of the strict industrial standards.

As an example, a number of Mondragon cooperatives have taken a results-oriented schedules, in which employees schedule their times based on the completion of tasks, seasonal requirements, and personal situations. Research indicates that when allowed to manage their time, employees report being more satisfied and less burnt out, as well as having a stronger social cohesion with their jobs (European Research Institute, 2021).

The model of Mondragon shows that workers with power prefer to use humane time structures-which makes the concept that the ownership of time cannot be separated of ownership of the economy valid.

Case Study 2: GitLab (Global) – A Fully Decentralised, Asynchronous Work Model

GitLab is a software development platform that has over 2,000 employees in over 60 countries, but does not have a central office. It has an organisational structure based on an asynchronous form of communication, that is, employees work with each other without the necessity to work at the same time or subject to fixed hours.

The model gives the workers the opportunity to build their days based on their rhythms, as GitLab terms non-linear workdays. Measurement of productivity is in terms of output rather than hours worked. Based on the Research by the 2024 Remote Work Report of GitLab, it was stated that 80 per cent of the employees assert that they are more productive when working at home, and they have the right to organise their time with family, health, and creativity (GitLab Report, 2024).

The success of GitLab confirms that it does not require strict schedules since it can be decentralised. The 9-to-5 is not exactly necessary in a digital world, but more a thing to do by industrial era thought.

Why Decolonising Time Matters: A Framework for the Future

Decolonisation time does not pertain to the abolishment of structure, but rather challenging the identity of the structure creator and the suitability of the structure to human well-being. There are some themes backing this movement:

1. Human rhythms differ from industrial rhythms
Biologically, individuals are different in their energy cycles. Imposing the same time schedules on millions of people disregards neurological, cultural, and seasonal diversity.

2. Community-based societies often value collective timing
Most indigenous and agrarian societies use time as a communal event around planting, harvesting, sharing of duties and rituals. Decolonising time is the process by which the rhythms of people are left to intermingle with economic structures.

3. Time autonomy reduces burnout
In a 2022 survey of workers worldwide conducted by Gallup, 76% of people said they had had symptoms of burnout, many of which are related to the inability to follow a flexible schedule (Gallup, 2022).

4. Technology renders linear schedules obsolete
Digital tools allow asynchronous collaboration, making geographic and temporal flexibility possible.

Toward Time Affluence: Pathways to Reform

To move beyond the industrial workday, governments and organisations can adopt several reforms:

Shorter workweeks (Iceland’s 4-day week trials showed increased productivity and higher well-being)
Output-focused evaluation instead of hour-tracking
Worker cooperatives and shared ownership
Remote-first or hybrid asynchronous models
Cultural flexibility that respects diverse time practices

Time is a kind of wealth, as people get freedom to spend the time meaningfully. In this regard, decolonising time is not so much about labour rights, but about regaining freedom, integrity, and humanness.

The 9-to-5 working schedule that was a representation of modernisation has become the symbol of industrial capitalism and the time discipline of the colonial era. As the world shifts towards digital, decentralised, and more human kinds of work, it is not the question of whether we are able or must decolonise time, but rather whether, in trying to create a more equitable and sustainable future, we can do so.

The process of decolonising time is ultimately concerned with shifting time as a resource of institutions to time as a resource of people and communities. And within that turn, the possibility of a world in which optimistic life, rather than factory output, will establish the pace of life.

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